Trying New Things Thursday

Over the weekend I finished up a wall hanging to enter into the Tangerine Tango Challenge.  Along the way, I did lots of new things:

1.  I used fabric choices that were definitely not something I would have ever chosen on my own.  Orange is not a color I am particularly drawn to, and my palette was limited by the fabrics available in my very small local quilt shop.

2.  I took a class!  I signed up for Cathedral Windows by Machine just to get myself out of the house.  Getting out more is one of my New Year’s Resolutions.   BTW, there were three other people in the class and the median age was 68.  I only know this because they were discussing social security…for like a half hour…really.  Another of my New Year’s Resolutions is to start a local Modern Quilt Guild here in southern Maryland.  I’ve already recruited a handful of quilters and I can’t wait to meet more people in real life without having to fly to Utah or London.  I want to do those things too, but with a baby it’s just not really possible for a few years.

3.  I did mitered corners.  I followed an online tutorial that I can’t seem to find now, and it worked like a charm.

4.  I added corners to the back of the quilt for hanging via a dowel.  I saw this method somewhere a while back on another person’s blog and it worked like a charm, too!  This photo is before I added the binding.  The binding covers up the raw edges perfectly and then later I can slide a dowel into the two corner pockets for hanging.

5.  I quilted this with different color threads.  I have used other colors besides cream or white, but this is the first time I’ve ever used such bright colors and had the lines stand out so much.

I am linking this up to Melissa’s Trying New Things Thursday.